On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 04:00:12PM -0600, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> On 10/25/10 15:37 , Matthew Van Gundy wrote (via
> Bill Kendrick):
> > I stopped using OpenOffice a long time ago in favor of LaTeX and I
> > quietly smile every time I go to a presentation and someone is having
> > trouble with the compatibility of PowerPoint between machines. It has
> > been a good trade-off for me. However, I have yet to recommend LaTeX as
> > a substitute to anyone who is not in Computer Science. It requires more
> > understanding about its principles of operation than the average word
> > processor user can be expected to bring to the table.
>
> I've also switched to LaTeX long ago (Engineer myself) and have had
> similar experiences. I often advise MS users to convert their
> word/powerpoint document to PDF before sharing or presenting on another
> computer. Sometimes they take my advice, but often they don't.

I am wishing that I had done this report for my MS project using LaTex.

OpenOffice has strange behaviour. The bibliography works very strange
and seems rather half baked. When I print on GNU/Linux on my Brother
printer, the top margin moves way down despite having it set at 1.5
in. I can't seem to get a figure to rotate to horizontal on the page.
The formatting on the Table of Contents is scrunched together. I just
hope I can get a report is acceptable to the Office of Graduate Studies.

I bet your page is set for A4 rather than Letter size paper. There's document-level and system-level settings for paper size, and the default is A4 in many installations. If the various settings are not mutually consistent, you could end up with weird margins being added or subtracted as the program tries to fit the output on the desired paper. It's a bit like letterboxing on TV sets. A4 is taller and narrower than letter size.